Hotham Biathlon Holiday Program Report - Winter 2023
It has been a great few weeks of Biathlon here at Hotham. The early snow fall made the conditions especially good giving our large squad of athletes the ability to train XC skiing and .22 shooting and on a range of different trails and environments. Over the School holiday period we were fortunate to have a total of 24 athletes training over several camps and another dozen more within the under 12 Future Stars camp. A big thanks to Biathlon Australia coach Toscha Stopar for doing such an awesome job again leading the Future Stars program who are our next up and coming Biathletes of Australia.
The Week 1 residential camp which was run out of Bembooka Ski Club was a great success. As the majority of participants consisted of athletes who have only been in the sport for one to two years, the camp focused on educating athletes about how to create a strong, positive team environment. Led by a few of the more experienced athletes the culture was one of supporting each other to learn and train well. As one of the first camps of the season, this week provided a good beginning for skiing and shooting on snow for the Australian season, with a large focus on building up the developing athletes on-snow technique, balance and basic shooting procedures. The camp was delivered by coaches Damon Morton, Toscha Stopar and Cameron Morton which provided a high ratio of coaches to athletes. The program could not have been run so smoothly without the valuable help of a number of parents. As an additional and integral aspect of the camp, workshops were organised with Professional Sports Psychologist Gavin Freeman over two evening sessions with a focus around race and training psychology, what it means to be an athlete, and the mental side of sport.
A further 3-day Biathlon Australia National Team camp was run in the second week of the school holidays that saw more of older and experienced IBU level athletes arrive and begin their on-snow training at the Hotham Biathlon range. Here, the focus was more the athletes gaining large hours of on snow training combined with .22 shooting drills, as well as beginning the race preparations with a number of speed and interval sessions. On the shooting side of things, the athletes on this camp were all exposed to a variety of new shooting drills that gave the opportunity to work on their speed, accuracy, timing and most importantly focus on the range. This camp also included work with Gavin Freeman over two sessions, with the subjects pitched more towards competing at an elite level. These sessions were extremely interactive and found to have a very positive impact on the athletes who participated.
Mt Hotham resort very graciously provided access to the conference area of the Moth at Whiskey Flat Biathlon Range for the second week of the Program, which was a great benefit to the participants including enabling our teams to have a separate place from the public to eat and prepare lunches, get changed and rest, as well as attend the talks given by Gavin Freeman.
The Biathlon Australia Board would again like to thank all the coaches involved in the last few weeks of training. Special thanks too to Paul Connor for acting as Range Officer and all the parents involved in supporting the athletes. All in all, besides the sometimes questionable and weary weather at Hotham, we are happy to say everyone had a really positive few weeks of training and we are excited to see everyone at the up-and coming races next weekend!
